S. 993 The Comprehensive Justice and Mental Health Act of 2015

Equitas is very pleased to announce that Senator Franken (D-Minnesota) and Senator Cornyn (R-Texas) have introduced S. 993 The Comprehensive Justice and Mental Health Act of 2015 in the U.S. Senate.

If passed, this legislation would directly promote Equitas’s mission by making available grants for crisis intervention teams, new curricula for police academies, mental health training for federal law enforcement, and community mapping exercises along the Sequential Intercept Model for counties around the nation.

Additionally, the bill supports the use of evidence-based practices and would provide funding for mental health courts, veterans treatment courts, and corrections-based mental health screening and treatment.

This bill makes clear that Equitas’s raison d’etre — keeping persons with mental illness and other brain challenges out of the criminal justice system and connecting them with treatment — has now become a national priority. We believe that this is a national movement with bipartisan support.

For more information, please see below for links to a brief summary as well as the text of the bill’s current version: